Cardiology
by KelseyO
Summary: She's not very good at masking her feelings, and she knows this, too. She's not good at not glaring at their hand-holding, at not cringing when they say stuff like "my husband" and "my wife," and she's especially not good at not taking most of this out on Callie. 3x18 headcanon. Note: I haven't seen anything past this episode so please don't spoil me in reviews.


I've been watching Grey's for the first time this summer. I just watched 3x18 and I spent the whole episode forming an Izzie headcanon that seemed obvious to me... but then they had her sleep with George and it was stupid. So here's what I literally ASSUMED was going through Izzie's head the whole episode.

* * *

_Cardiology (n): the branch of medicine that deals with diseases and abnormalities of the heart._

_._

Love is a lot like surgery, Izzie thinks. Someone cuts you open and explores you with careful, steady hands, sees how you work, sees _everything_. They see your past, the tumors and clots and scars, some that have caused you pain your whole life and some that you might not have even realized were there. They do their best to fix what's broken, what's wrong, and then they sew you back up, and all either of you can do is hope that you've been changed for the better.

It's pretty ironic, this metaphor of hers, because she's the surgeon and Denny was the patient. _Her_ patient. _She_ was supposed to fix _him_, to try to extend his cruelly short life. But his smile made the incision, his jokes were the retractor, and those damn Scrabble marathons were the scalpel cutting carefully around her heart, getting closer and closer with each slice until he was holding the beating muscle in his hand. She thought it would be safe there (and even that she'd keep it there forever).

But then he died, and his hand was yanked away, roughly and without warning, and the pulsing walls of the muscle hadn't been the same since.

It hurt. It hurt like _hell_, worse than anything she's ever experienced. And yeah, she's not lying on the bathroom floor anymore or baking so many muffins that George tried to get her to call the Guinness World Records people. But that doesn't mean she's okay, and she knows this.

She knows this because she sobbed her way through depositing that check, and because she panicked when Alex kissed her, and because she hates that George and Callie eloped.

When George announced it to the locker room, she assumed he was joking. He must've been talking about something else, an alternative definition of marriage that didn't involve vows and rings and a certificate, because they've only been together for a few months and they're almost always bickering about something and they aren't _ready_.

Izzie thinks getting married is a lot like being a surgeon. You have to be sure about every action, you have to take the proper steps, the correct protocol, and you can't rush things. You have to consider all the options, every alternative, so you're certain it's the right thing to do. You have to know exactly what you're doing.

She knew exactly what she was doing with Denny. Their time together may have been more condensed than the average relationship, but she knew it was true. She knew that his Izzie smile made her smile her Denny smile, that every word, every touch felt purposeful, intimate, because when you have a faulty heart every moment is precious and sometimes you need to live faster than everyone else.

That's why it was okay that he proposed, and that's why it's okay that she said yes, and that's why she was engaged to a man she'd only ever seen lying in a hospital bed.

And then she walked into his room and he was still and his eyes were empty and then she was crying against Alex's chest instead of Denny's and then that cold, hard bathroom floor.

It's not fair. She was in _love_, she and Denny were in _love_, and George and Callie have no idea what they're doing. They've moved in and moved out and fought and made up and fought again, and yet here they are post-Vegas with rings on their fingers and a piece of paper saying they're husband and wife. But they don't know the first thing about any of it, about what it means to commit to someone for the rest of your life, to find that soulmate who complements you in the most perfect way, who completes you.

Callie doesn't complete George, and George doesn't complete Callie, and they don't deserve to have an Elvis impersonator pronounce them man and wife. She and Denny deserved that, because what they had was real and amazing and she _knew_ it was right.

She's not very good at masking her feelings, and she knows this, too. She's not good at not glaring at their hand-holding, at not cringing when they say stuff like "my husband" and "my wife," and she's especially not good at not taking most of this out on Callie.

Because she hates Callie for being an orthopedic surgeon, for being strong and healthy and _alive_, and for using her money on an expensive hotel room and expensive hotel room meals, because that's everything Denny wasn't.

She hates Callie, and that might be why she lets herself sleep with George.

But when she wakes up the next morning and feels like she's cheated on Denny, she hates herself even more.


End file.
